But realistically, if you want skilled professionals in a field, you need to pay them competitively and offer long term career prospects. Otherwise you’re going to only get people who take the job as a stepping stone to another position, like a high paying job at a big company they passed a bunch of laws to help, or who can make money in other ways.

But this is already what we get anyway. Like 90% of our "representatives" behave this way.

I do agree though that maybe 1.5x is a little low especially since they're supposedly "required" to maintain a residence closer to d.c as well and that's super expensive. I'd say the public pay for their housing near d.c and then we can consider lower salaries for them, or at least having them be closer to what their constituents make so they understand what people actually have to go through to get by.